Print systems include presentation architectures that are provided for representing documents in a data format that is independent of the methods that are utilized to capture or create those documents. One example of an exemplary presentation system, which will be described herein, is the (Advanced Function Presentation) AFP™ system developed by International Business Machines Corporation. According to the AFP system, documents may include combinations of text, image, graphics, and/or bar code objects in device and resolution independent formats. Documents may also include and/or reference fonts, overlays, and other resource objects, which are required at presentation time to present the data properly.
Once the documents are received at a printer, processing is performed to convert a document into a printable format. However, processing high-resolution images in an incoming data stream into a printable format typically involves highly compute-intensive operations (e.g., scaling, rotation, decompression, color conversion, etc.).
Further, it is common for a printer to frequently process repetitive images throughout a print job. For instance, a print job may include a full-page background image or a company logo that appears on every printed page. While some data streams, such as AFP, allow a print job generator to explicitly identify such an image, download the image once and then reuse it, some other data streams do not. Moreover, the print job generators may not use the capability even if present. Therefore, inefficiency occurs in having to repeatedly process the same images into a printable form.
As a result, a mechanism to store and reuse processed images is desired.